Adorno held that salvation comes from radicalizing rigidification while preserving spontaneity.

Evidence

Adorno thought art had lost its way and changed into ideology. However, `as long as art still trembles like the voice of humanity’, he was confronted with the problem of how to distinguish between art that accepted inhumanity, on the one hand, and inhuman art that was nevertheless implacably opposed to inhumanity, on the other. The answer he gave was provided by a central topos of his thought: all salvation was to come from an exacerbation of the rigidifying process, but at the same time all salvation depended on there still being a residue of subjectivity and spontaneity left (see p. 307). — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2194

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that intensified rigidification is simultaneously the only route to salvation and the thing that must be resisted by a residue of spontaneity — a genuinely dense formulation of Adorno’s negative dialectics.
• XREF: connects to: Adorno framed the subject’s choice as rigidification or dissolution in nature. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1281; Adorno’s final philosophy denied the achievability of salvation while keeping its standpoint — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 836; For Adorno, rigid materialism itself reifies and becomes ideology — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1319

Broader Connections

• Adorno’s final philosophy denied the achievability of salvation while keeping its standpoint #complicates (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 836
• For Adorno, rigid materialism itself reifies and becomes ideology #complicates (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1319